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Lord Currie: I think there is an important distinction that Stephen was making between informing people at the point of, in effect, a regime change, moving from 192 to a variety of 118 numbers, which is what Oftel, we felt, should have been done more, and which we have been aiming to do in other products, from providing information on a continuous basis in an established market. The latter is a very difficult task technically and probably almost impossible to keep up to date, and we are not clear that that is the role for us to be doing that.
Q137 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I am rather confused, you see, because there are a huge number of gas, oil, electricity and energy providers in this country and yet that task is managed by them, but it seems to me that you cannot even manage it for the Directory Enquiries service providers. I do not think that is rocket science, I think it can be done and I think that it needs to be done to allow people, in your own words, to have a neutral point of information in this very important and costly area, and it is costly for lots of people. Why are you running away from what seems to be a very reasonable ask on behalf of the people of this country?
Mr Carter: I suspect we are not going to agree on the question of how much consumer information should we provide. I will say three things and my Chairman may wish to add in. Firstly, we give this a lot of time and discussion within Ofcom as to where and when we should provide a neutral point of information, and on three or four occasions we have done it. There are specific reasons why we have done it and normally they have involved either a market transition or a particular investigation where there has been a high level of abuse, where there has been a consistent record of failed delivery by the operators. We have decided not to set ourselves up as a permanent independent broker of information across the entire market, for two reasons: firstly, because it would be substantially resource intensive and we do not have the resource to do it; secondly, because we do not believe it is technically doable; and thirdly, there are alternative providers in the market who do it - there are commercial providers. If it is the case that they do not in the areas you are interested in then clearly that is an issue that we should take up with you separately and we can look at the specifics of the case upon which you are asking us to provide more information.
Chairman: I am going to cut off here, if I may, because we have three minutes and there is one area left and it was prompted by something you just said there, Stephen. I was going to say let us move on to telephone numbers, and I did not mean the numbering plan, but your budget because you said you did not have enough resources. I think John Whittingdale, my fellow Chairman, has a few thoughts about resources.
Q138 Mr Whittingdale: Yes. Stephen, in your message of your parliamentary bulletin you proudly tell us that Ofcom will deliver for less and you point out that you have achieved a real terms budget reduction for the third consecutive year, which is commendable. But your budget is still nearly £130m whereas the budget of the Telecom Regulator in France is £12.9m and the US Federal Communications Commission, which does include broadcasting, which I accept the French one does not, manages to cover the whole of America with £170m. Why are you so expensive?
Mr Carter: You speak from a position of knowledge I do not have, Chairman, on the French ART and FCC comparisons, and I will very happily go to France and indeed go to Washington and do the analysis and come back and answer your question.
Q139 Rob Marris: Just do not call home when you are there!
Mr Carter: We will go next year, it will be cheaper! What I can comment on with some degree of authority is how the numbers compare to the previous costs of doing regulation in this country, which is what we are responsible for; I do not know the reach of the US and the French authorities but I suspect that they are substantially different although the names and descriptions may suggest similarities. When I do compare them to the previous costs of regulation in this country we are as we say.
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Parliamentary update (Read 528,855 times)
